Kickstarter Launches Live Streaming Component for Modern Infomercials

Kickstarter projects always have some layer of uncertainty. If you give someone this money, will they actually use it to develop a working product or business? While there are certainly success stories, it isn’t hard to find a variety of failed projects or scams.

As crowdfunding grows, currently estimated to be a $34 billion industry, there will continue to grow scams. Platforms like Kickstarter need the user’s trust in order to facilitate transactions and they’re now launching a live video feature. The service, built on top of Huzza, allows creators to present themselves in front of current and tentative backers. This can be used for a status update, product demo, or anything else. There is a chat component, where individuals are able to ask questions and get immediate answers. The Q&A section lets users vote on the most pressing questions as well.

This should help verify that the projects are legitimate and are progressing smoothly. Creators can get started with Kickstarter Live now in their projects. It is becoming the modern infomercial, where users can engage entrepreneurs more directly and have a better understanding of product legitimacy. Perhaps one day Kickstarter creators will pay for air time on a channel or live stream and mirror their live video to engage a larger audience.

Nick Felker is a student Electrical & Computer Engineering student at Rowan University (C/O 2017) and the student IEEE webmaster. When he's not studying, he is a software developer for the web and Android (Felker Tech). He has several open source projects on GitHub (http://github.com/fleker)
Devices: Moto G-2013 Moto G-2015, Moto 360, Google ADT-1, Nexus 7-2013 (x2), Lenovo Laptop, Custom Desktop.
Although he was an intern at Google, the content of this blog is entirely independent and his own thoughts.